San Diego Gas & Electric is conducting the only Broadband over Power Line (BPL) trial in the state of CALIFORNIA.!!!

``The commission's actions create a very favorable climate for the development of BPL in California,'' said SDG&E spokesman Eddie Van Herik.
~~~~~


fyi: AMBIENT ENTERS CALIFORNIA MARKET
SDG&E Selects Ambient to Assess BPL Technology
Boston, MA, July 21, 2005

======

Regulators ease the way for broadband over power lines
By Jessie Seyfer
Mercury News
Posted on Fri, Apr. 28, 2006

Three main wires feed into most California homes -- cable, phone and electricity.

While cable and phone lines have brought the Internet to residents for years, on Thursday state regulators cleared a path for electrical lines to do the same one day.

Broadband over power lines, or BPL, is a fledgling technology that sends data over wires without interfering with electricity flows. But BPL presents a regulatory dilemma as it's both an electrical and a communications service. With its legal status unclear, companies have been slow to develop BPL services.

So to spur BPL on, the California Public Utilities Commission voted Thursday to reduce the number of regulatory hurdles companies must clear to experiment with the technology.

``BPL can provide Californians with a new broadband pipe to the home,'' said Commissioner Rachelle Chong, who wrote the new guidelines, which were adopted by a 4-1 vote. ``More broadband competition will bring benefits to Californians. Thus, this . . . decision is pro-consumer in the most fundamental ways. It will introduce a new competitor, which in turns helps drive broadband prices down.''

The dissenter was Commissioner Geoffrey Brown, who favored more stringent regulations.

Utility companies are the gatekeepers for any experiments that BPL companies conduct on their lines. Companies that run tests do not necessarily have to be utilities. A broadband provider -- such as the Google-backed Current Communications Group, of Maryland -- could test a BPL service.

The rules adopted Thursday require less PUC oversight for agreements that BPL companies strike with utilities to access their power lines.

If a utility company decides to conduct its own BPL trials, the guidelines call for such experiments not to be funded with money collected from utility rate-payers.

The rules acknowledge that BPL is in such an early stage of development that it wouldn't be fair for ratepayers to fund something so unproven.

`Favorable climate'

Utility companies praised the decision.

``We think it does a good job of helping encourage utility participation in BPL,'' said John Nelson, a spokesman for PG&E, which is not currently conducting any trials but is interested in the technology.

San Diego Gas & Electric is conducting the only BPL trial in the state.

``The commission's actions create a very favorable climate for the development of BPL in California,'' said SDG&E spokesman Eddie Van Herik.

Cable and phone companies could suffer if a technology like BPL succeeds, but AT&T spokesman John Britton said his company felt it was serving customers well.

``AT&T shares the commission's goal of expanding broadband access and consumer choice,'' he said. ``Customers tell us they're very satisfied with AT&T-Yahoo Internet service.''

Comcast spokesman Andrew Johnson said, ``Obviously this is a very crowded field with lots of competitors. This would just be one more competitor.''

Yet for all its promise, BPL presents some major technological problems.

For one thing, it's slow. Present technology allows it to run about as fast as DSL at its slowest, said Juan Fernandez, an analyst with Gartner. High-end DSL and cable services are five to eight times faster.

As part of the commission's ruling, a BPL company would be responsible for costs associated with adding equipment to poles.

BPL Internet signals take the form of radio pulses that piggyback on the electrical wires. The radio pulses leak off the power lines and interfere with nearby radio signals.

Rural areas

It's also unlikely that BPL will end up being the solution to providing broadband to communities where there's no DSL or cable-modem service. That's because it's not as simple as plugging a computer into the socket, Fernandez said. To get BPL out to rural areas, a significant amount of equipment needs to be installed on the lines.

``You need some subscriber density to make it cost-effective,'' he said. ``It's not really the kind of thing for farms.''

from:
http://www.siliconvalley.com